Raw Ale / No Boil

[Miraculix]

So in a sense you’re mashing and then batch sparging. Doesn’t this lower your OG? And how would you add hops? I’d think you would need another pot to do hopstand/whirlpool.... no?

You have to know your efficiency with this system to calculate your Og. I get about 80% so I calculate the grain bill accordingly.

The hops are boiled separately in the third of the water designated to the hop tea.

 

[applescrap]

So in a sense you’re mashing and then batch sparging. Doesn’t this lower your OG? And how would you add hops? I’d think you would need another pot to do hopstand/whirlpool.... no?

I didnt, I did biab with a little less water than normal. But since the mash is thicker, batch sparging wouldn't be the worst idea for this kind of Brewing. I microwaved two cups of water to Boiling and steeped the Hops in it. IBU calculators can calculate hops in water. As noted hops isomerize better in plain water. If you are going to batch sparge, then it's not the worst idea to bring it up to 160 before putting it in the fermenting vessel. I kind of half-a.. sanitized and sought to keep the fluid above 140 into the bucket. As it sits there cooling at 140 or even above surely it is sanitizing. 160 is the temperature of flash pasteurization. As it sets at temperatures below that overtime it is also sanitizing. At least that's what I'm hoping. Back to the original issue since the Wort is more concentrated the amount lost in absorption becomes much more important

 

[SanPancho]

So maybe i wasn’t totally clear in my questions but my hope would be to work this method on a normal 6%ish beer.

So if i did any sparging it would have to be after mashing to an extremely high gravity as the sparge would dilute.

Decisions decisions.

 

[cmac62]

Ok, so my HBC met yesterday and I brought my two bottles, one boiled and one not. They were not identical, but both tasted good. Actually most of the folks present said they liked the no boil beer better. Also the no boil was significantly clearer. The difference I noticed was it seemed the boil did help everything meld, the no boil seemed like each ingredient was more distinct.

I will definitely be doing more no boil brewing. It is not about the time for me. Usually if I'm brewing I figure about 4 hours from start to finish. Where I may use this is when I'm brewing a partigyle, or small beer after sparging the grains from a bigger beer. Of course I will have to remember I will not have any boil off so the OG coming out of the MT will be the OG. Maybe double the trouble (threads) and ferment with lager yeast at ale temps, just for fun.

 

[Miraculix]

Ok, so my HBC met yesterday and I brought my two bottles, one boiled and one not. They were not identical, but both tasted good. Actually most of the folks present said they liked the no boil beer better. Also the no boil was significantly clearer. The difference I noticed was it seemed the boil did help everything meld, the no boil seemed like each ingredient was more distinct.

I will definitely be doing more no boil brewing. It is not about the time for me. Usually if I'm brewing I figure about 4 hours from start to finish. Where I may use this is when I'm brewing a partigyle, or small beer after sparging the grains from a bigger beer. Of course I will have to remember I will not have any boil off so the OG coming out of the MT will be the OG. Maybe double the trouble (threads) and ferment with lager yeast at ale temps, just for fun.

Did that with a Pilsener, see the "lazy German" thread in the lager recipe forum. Turned out great!


My raw Indian red has a strong infection, hoping for Brett. Big pellicle on top, looks like an alien wasteland. There is a Foto in the lambic forum here in the thread "helps! I gots the bretts!!"

Bought myself two new fermenters, a glas one to age the (hopefully) Brett red Indian for months and a plastic one to keep going with the daylie fermentation. The old one gets into the bin.

Next will be a raw mild split into two batches and brewed with two different yeasts (Belgian and s04)

 

[applescrap]

The pumpkin beer went nuts. Fermented over a few days so no issue from warm pitch. I am not surprised about infections with these, see my comments above. I think the wort must enter the fermenter above 140 so it can pasteurize in the fermenter. Or everything that touches it must be cold side sanatized.

Thanks cmac for the findings. It sounds like there was no doughy or fresh wort taste. That is my concern.

 

[Miraculix]

The pumpkin beer went nuts. Fermented over a few days so no issue from warm pitch. I am not surprised about infections with these, see my comments above. I think the wort must enter the fermenter above 140 so it can pasteurize in the fermenter. Or everything that touches it must be cold side sanatized.

Thanks cmac for the findings. It sounds like there was no doughy or fresh wort taste. That is my concern.

I doubt that it has anything to do with the raw technic, I have just ****ing poor sanitation standards.

I never sanitise, only soap and hot water and even forgot to wear gloves when squeezing the wort out of the bag. With sanitised equipment and gloves, this probably wouldn't have happened.

... Will start to sanitise now.

 

[cmac62]

With no boil almost everything is on the cold side and sanitation needs to be a much higher priority no doubt.

 

[cmac62]

The pumpkin beer went nuts. Fermented over a few days so no issue from warm pitch. I am not surprised about infections with these, see my comments above. I think the wort must enter the fermenter above 140 so it can pasteurize in the fermenter. Or everything that touches it must be cold side sanatized.

Thanks cmac for the findings. It sounds like there was no doughy or fresh wort taste. That is my concern.

The only difference I noted was that the boiled beer seemed more integrated. The raw beer had a different flavor, and I could definitely taste the grains and hops more.

 

[Miraculix]

With no boil almost everything is on the cold side and sanitation needs to be a much higher priority no doubt.

Well, that is only half of the truth. Above 60c, everything gets pasteurised, which means there will be even less amounts of bugs left that would have been left after sanitation with star san etc..

As mentioned before by applescrap, I think one of the things that could be done is to make sure that the wort enters the fermenter above 60c to ensure the ongoing pasteurisation also pasteurises the fermenter. Meaning my cold sparging days might be over now...

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Above 60c, everything gets pasteurised,

No, you're just killing most things. But not everything. Boiling will kill more things, pressure-cooking will kill even more. But even autoclaved media can see the odd fungal spore germinate after a few months.

The 60C thing is just doing a "good enough" job for most purposes, as it's pretty much killing anything that is actively alive (assuming you've not picked up certain weird bacteria from hot springs) but it won't touch many things when they are "hibernating" as a spore.

 

[Miraculix]

No, you're just killing most things. But not everything. Boiling will kill more things, pressure-cooking will kill even more. But even autoclaved media can see the odd fungal spore germinate after a few months.

The 60C thing is just doing a "good enough" job for most purposes, as it's pretty much killing anything that is actively alive (assuming you've not picked up certain weird bacteria from hot springs) but it won't touch many things when they are "hibernating" as a spore.

Exactly, I never said that it kills everything, but I said that pasteurising does a better job than star san and co. 60c is the lowest possible temperature where pasteurisation happens, the higher the better. So in our case, to be sure, I would aim for something around 65c or higher when transferring into the fermenter just to account for possible temperature drops due to a cold fermenter or air contact during the pouring.

Actually, I was also thinking about the hot spring bugs and the bugs next to the black smokers in the ocean when I read about the pasteurisation stuff yesterday. Luckily the distance between my kitchen and yellow stone and the bottom of the deep sea is big enough to be almost 100% sure that there won't be any contamination from those sources happening

 

[applescrap]

With no boil almost everything is on the cold side and sanitation needs to be a much higher priority no doubt.

Ohh great, now you tell me! Haha, cheers

Since I made that beer I have commented many times on this and it's been racking my brain. I use a bucket colander and lid to squeeze the bag. I'm starting to think the best thing to do is after squeezing the bag and all that, to put the pot back on until it hits 160. Sitting in the bucket no chilling at 160 it will definitely pasteurize everything. Option b is to work quick enough that the beer enters the fermenter above 140ish where it can remain for a half hour. And option c, sanatize everything overly well. I think the easiest thing to do is heat wort before putting in bucket? What are your thoughts?

 

[Miraculix]

Ohh great, now you tell me! Haha, cheers

Hahahaha, another accidental lambic in the making?

 

[Miraculix]

As I do not have a pot big enough to reheat my wort, I will try to keep everything above 60c. I will mash a bit higher for this... Or maybe I will reheat the wort a bit... Hmmmmmm... Certainly don't want to buy a third fermenter because I got another accident lambic going on....

 

[cmac62]

Ohh great, now you tell me! Haha, cheers

Since I made that beer I have commented many times on this and it's been racking my brain. I use a bucket colander and lid to squeeze the bag. I'm starting to think the best thing to do is after squeezing the bag and all that, to put the pot back on until it hits 160. Sitting in the bucket no chilling at 160 it will definitely pasteurize everything. Option b is to work quick enough that the beer enters the fermenter above 140ish where it can remain for a half hour. And option c, sanitize everything overly well. I think the easiest thing to do is heat wort before putting in bucket? What are your thoughts?

Yea, I would pasturize at 160ish for a few secs them dump into fermenter, let it cool and pitch in the a.m., as long as everything it touches afterwards is sanitized well. Sounds sound to me :rockin:

 

[cmac62]

As I do not have a pot big enough to reheat my wort, I will try to keep everything above 60c. I will mash a bit higher for this... Or maybe I will reheat the wort a bit... Hmmmmmm... Certainly don't want to buy a third fermenter because I got another accident lambic going on....

I'm no expert, but it seems if you sanitize the fermenter and put it in hot there should be no issues. I have never had an infected batch and I rinse everything in starsan that touches the beer after I turn off the boil. So sanitize your fermenter like always and there should be no issues there. IMHO.

 

[Jwin]

A chemical spray bottle and a gallon of distilled water($3 total investment) will do wonders.
If your not sanitizing the fermentor properly, you are only pasteurizing the parts of the fermentor that the wort is touching. That's not good enough.
Another thing to consider is you will have a decent amount of suck back as the wort cools. Big issue is lacto around 100-115 F. Replacing your airlock with one of inline hepa filters may be beneficial.
The Aussie nochill method involves one of those pet cubes, with all the air pushed out. That way, everything touches the wort, and no bugs in the air and no hot side oxidation.
Another thought, instead of mashing at 160+, why not just do a decoction? If it's large enough, you will guarantee you get up to 165+. Few other ways to do it, but taking a couple of qts from 160 to boiling takes little time. May as well add some hops while your at it.
Cheers.

 

[Miraculix]

The reason why we do not have problems with dms using the no boil method is that we do not heat above 80c. If you do decoction, you will generate dms.

I agree with the above, sanitising everything is a good idea.

 

[applescrap]

So here is a pasteurization chart showing how long something needs to sit at each temperature. You can see if the beer enters the fermenter at 145, then that's probably going to be good enough and any higher all the better. For me I will work quicker next time and just make sure that beer enters the sanitized fermenter after the mash much quicker. Even if the colander and squeeze bucket aren't sanitized, at 145 degrees the beer will pasteurize in 10 minutes.

 

[applescrap]

I don't know why my phone isn't uploading pictures. Note this is much more stringent pasteurization than lacto iirc. Sorry still no attachment. I'll try to attach the link.

https://goo.gl/images/vfzR9t

 

[Miraculix]

So here is a pasteurization chart showing how long something needs to sit at each temperature. You can see if the beer enters the fermenter at 145, then that's probably going to be good enough and any higher all the better. For me I will work quicker next time and just make sure that beer enters the sanitized fermenter after the mash much quicker. Even if the colander and squeeze bucket aren't sanitized, at 145 degrees the beer will pasteurize in 10 minutes.

I agree. I am only a bit worried about the parts that do not get permanent contact with the wort (you do not fill it to the top and the lid does not touch it as well). So the usual sanitation routine plus the wort above 140 degrees ( 60 c) should do the job.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I'd be very, very cautious of reading across from eg poultry charts like that one. Chicken people are just worried about bacteria, specifically the "Big 3" - E.coli, Salmonella & Campylobacter. And since they're only worried about getting it onto your plate within minutes, and through your gut within a day or two, they typically quote the time taken for a reduction of 90% of bacteria - say 2 minutes at 70C.

However, you need a much higher level of sanitation than mere chicken if you're going to be leaving things with 5 gallons of nutrients for a couple of weeks. When I worked in labs, fungi were always far more of a problem than bacteria, even on media that were intended for growing bacteria. You'd even get the odd fungal spore germinating after 20 minutes in a medical autoclave - but it was only in a small proportion of cases, months after autoclaving. Using a domestic pressure cooker was noticably less effective, but could still keep them at bay for weeks (we tended to only use the pressure cooker for I-need-this-to-happen-tonight stuff though).

So don't regard 60-70C as the last word in sterilisation - it's not, it's a continuum and even after 20 minutes at >120C, there will still be the odd fungal spore surviving. But that's unlikely to be a problem in the typical fermenation of a week or two. But the kind of thing that's tolerated in chicken, is probably going to be a problem for wort.

 

[applescrap]

I'd be very, very cautious of reading across from eg poultry charts like that one. Chicken people are just worried about bacteria, specifically the "Big 3" - E.coli, Salmonella & Campylobacter. And since they're only worried about getting it onto your plate within minutes, and through your gut within a day or two, they typically quote the time taken for a reduction of 90% of bacteria - say 2 minutes at 70C.

However, you need a much higher level of sanitation than mere chicken if you're going to be leaving things with 5 gallons of nutrients for a couple of weeks. When I worked in labs, fungi were always far more of a problem than bacteria, even on media that were intended for growing bacteria. You'd even get the odd fungal spore germinating after 20 minutes in a medical autoclave - but it was only in a small proportion of cases, months after autoclaving. Using a domestic pressure cooker was noticably less effective, but could still keep them at bay for weeks (we tended to only use the pressure cooker for I-need-this-to-happen-tonight stuff though).

So don't regard 60-70C as the last word in sterilisation - it's not, it's a continuum and even after 20 minutes at >120C, there will still be the odd fungal spore surviving. But that's unlikely to be a problem in the typical fermenation of a week or two. But the kind of thing that's tolerated in chicken, is probably going to be a problem for wort.

This is not my understanding. Iirc the opposite is actually true. Especially considering the presence of ethanol. Lacto has a lower pasteurization temp than the turkey/poultry. In fact that mere chicken plays a role in, according to some sources, 9000 deaths a year from food disease. When beer goes sour we love it. Bob Brews did no chill for like 2 years and drank it on a basic Brewing podcast. It actually might have been older or younger I can't remember but it's well-documented. The usda regulations for poultry are among the most stringent. We all know this is generally speaking and there are outliers but there were lower number charts and i offered a pretty strict one. If I'm completely wrong on all this please fill me in.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

In most cases we don't love it when beer goes sour - Acetobacter or Lactobacillus are major faults in most beer, such as the lagers mentioned above. But they're fine in chicken. I was thinking more of wild yeasts and other fungi, which don't really get a foothold in chicken because there's no time, but which are happy growing and contaminating some wort held at fermentation temperatures for a few weeks.

No chill is not really relevant here - if you do it right then it's no different to normal cooling from a contamination point of view.

Don't kid yourself about the USDA, they've been so captured by producer interests that the US' lax food safety standards are one of the biggest sticking points in doing a trade deal with the EU.

You gave us an unsourced chart which talks of (undefined) "pasteurisation" at eg 0.2 minutes at 160F. I was quoting my personal experience of the odd fungus surviving 20 minutes >250F. We are literally talking orders of magnitude difference in sterilisation. Your chart is pretty meaningless unless it said what it was actually referring to - kill rate and organism; as I say, my guess would be that it's a 90% kill of one of the main food bacteria.

And that's fine, different scenarios need different amount of sterilisation, you wouldn't want all chicken autoclaved because the meat would be inedible, and 90% kill of Salmonella etc is good enough for most purposes.

 

[applescrap]

Don't kid yourself about the USDA, they've been so captured by producer interests that the US' lax food safety standards....

I don't understand why you would take a dig at US food and safety. The Volkswagen diesel emission scandal, a massive horse meat scandal, anecdotal comments about food quality and taste in England, and your laxidasical comments about chicken. Clearly the US isn't the only one with a problem.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...food-poisoning-health-safety-deaths-thinktank

 

[RustyHorn]

I don't understand why you would take a dig at US food and safety. The Volkswagen diesel emission scandal, a massive horse meat scandal, anecdotal comments about food quality and taste in England, and your laxidasical comments about chicken. Clearly the US isn't the only one with a problem.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...food-poisoning-health-safety-deaths-thinktank

They were scandals, not things authorised by the food standard agencies. Also, food taste in England is a myth. It comes from Asian communities complaining about how English food is bland. English food is actually very varied and the more traditional foods are very similar to French food - which is regarded as the best in the world. There are more Michelin starred restaurants in England than any other country outside France. We do have bad teeth though.

 

[applescrap]

The raw pumpkin is in the fridge and looks and smells nice. Dumped in gelatin today, cant wait to rack it and drink it, happy thanksgiving!

 

[applescrap]

Had to pull the pumpkin early. Was planning to let it clear for a few days before racking, but realized i needed to today. Racked it up. The fining or something messed with the spices or maybe not enough spices. Clearly no ill-effects from the no boil part of it. Need to figure out how the Hops work but made an awesome beer for sure. I will probably stop boiling most beers until further notice. Everyone knows I love to drink beer but I don't like to brew. The freshness of the unboiled Wort I enjoy.

 

[cmac62]

Okay, I cracked another pair of my 70 shilling exbeeriment beers the other night, and the truth is I like the boiled beer significantly better than its no boil brother. The 45 or so boil helped to bring everything together and it is a much more, mature, robust beer.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Gah, my original reply was lost in the boards upgrade.

I don't understand why you would take a dig at US food and safety. The Volkswagen diesel emission scandal, a massive horse meat scandal, anecdotal comments about food quality and taste in England, and your laxidasical comments about chicken. Clearly the US isn't the only one with a problem.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...food-poisoning-health-safety-deaths-thinktank

Fortunately I don't eat Volkswagens, and if you're going to include the rest of Europe it should be pointed out that you can find horsemeat in French supermarkets, they even have dedicated horse butchers, so the "scandal" of horsemeat is more a matter of cultural perspective. And I think I was trying to bring some precision to your lacksadaisical graph about chicken.

Just as background, I was tangentially involved in some of this kind of stuff in a previous life - I was just a minion but my boss was the guy that the USDA would call when they wanted to talk to "Britain" about our speciality. So I have seen this stuff from the inside, and personally I get suspicious when there aren't scandals - for instance it was always strange that France didn't report any cases of BSE when all her neighbours had it. In our little world it was another of our friends across the Channel that always seemed to be the source of problems, either through carelessness or illegality. They were so in thrall to their industry that the only problems that hit the headlines were the ones that had spiralled out of control; "UK testing discovers problem in imports of X from country Y" didn't normally get into the papers.

You do realise how lame it sounds to include "anecdotal comments about food quality and taste in England" in a discussion of food safety? I could equally judge US food safety on anecdotal stories about the taste of Big Macs. There may be a load of tourist dives in London which no local ever goes to, but there's no excuse for eating badly in the UK these days. Same also applies to beer, London is kinda notorious for cellarmanship that's below the UK average, but presumably uninformed tourists help keep those places in business - and there's plenty of great beer if you take the trouble to inform yourself where it is.

As it happens I've also been involved on that side of the fence, so I'm well aware of what it takes to get a 5* food hygiene rating. Merely having a clean kitchen only gets you 1-2*, most of it is all about process - dating food, recording fridge temperatures, that kind of thing. It's onerous, but it does mean that the hygiene ratings mean something.

But I never said that the UK was perfect, merely that the US is lax in comparison. From your Guardian link : "Each year food poisoning results in 20,000 people being hospitalised and 500 deaths." The US has nearly 5x the population of the UK, so if the US had a similar food safety record to the UK, you'd expect the US to have just under 100,000 hospitalisations and 2500 deaths.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/5/5/99-0502_article
"foodborne diseases cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year"

QED

 

[rubyroo]

Hey guys, I just finished my second no boil beer. The first went fairly well. I did a simple 50/50 malted wheat and pils with 2 ounces of Czech Saaz and 1 ounce of Perle for a 30 min hop stand at 170. Fermented with US 05. I kept things pretty simple to get a nice baseline. I obtained a nice rounded bitterness despite never going over 170. Which makes me think the current theory of zero IBU / utilization under 180 is incorrect.. or maybe it's beta acids or other bittering compounds. But I digress.

My second batch entered the fermentor last night. 2/3 2row and 1/3 malted wheat. Hop stand at 170 for 30 min with 1 oz Nelson Sauvin (All I had on hand) and I pitched my recently isolated strains of wild Sacc and Brett that I recently isolated and cultured up from a Saskatoon berry. I wanted to go full farmhouse on this batch.

Does anyone know if I should be concerned about contact time with the settled proteins and hops? while I let the Brett do its work post primary fermentation. I know Brett has a tendency to clean up after certain off flavours but I'm not sure about it being over exposed to hops or cold break.

 

[Miraculix]

Cannot tell you anything useful on this one but I really like your isolated wild yeast idea. I also have a raw wild Brett one going on atm... Well, it was an accident, but wild is wild

I did brew a raw pils (technically speaking, yours is an ale and not a pils), it tasted really good for the first month but now I have 20 gushing and bad tasting bottles left... They are infected I guess. My fault, will keep more focus on sanitization in the future.

Sanitation is really a hot topic in raw brewing. Had to learn this the hard way.

 

[madscientist451]

I did brew a raw pils (technically speaking, yours is an ale and not a pils), it tasted really good for the first month but now I have 20 gushing and bad tasting bottles left... They are infected I guess. My fault, will keep more focus on sanitization in the future.

Sanitation is really a hot topic in raw brewing. Had to learn this the hard way.

I'm thinking that brewing smaller batches that will be consumed quickly, and kegging instead of bottling (keep the beer cold) is the best way to go with no boil/raw brews. Boiling the beer really helps with "shelf stability".

 

[Miraculix]

100 % agree. If there should be a "sleeping infection" in the beer (like it must likely was the case in my pils) your suggested treatment of the brew would make sure that the infection does not have the time to "wake up" and ruin the beer.

But I also really think that this shouldn't be necessary if the wort is heated up to 70c, kept there for let's say 15 minutes, and then being introduced into the sanitized fermenter.

I did not work well with that Pilsener regarding applying of proper sanitation. It really was my own fault in this case.

 

[rubyroo]

Thanks, I've been itching to pitch these strains as I've been culturing them for a while. I'm definitely going to let the gravity stabilize before bottling so I don't get any gushers. I have had pretty good luck with the hop stand at 170 for half an hour. No 'infections' or accidental sours to speak of. Although I think I might try a sour with this method.

 

[Miraculix]

The hop stand at 170 sounds like a good and effective way to keep it clean. I
might try that in the future. How did you calculate the amount of hops you needed?

 

[Miraculix]

Btw. I just bottled today my dark raw mild. It is a real session mild, around 3.2% alc, lots of roasted and toasted grains and flaked barley. I am really really curious how this one turns out. The first falt sample when botteling tasted really promising. Lots of roast character, coffee chocolate, but not as intense as in stout or porter.

Will post the recipe when it turns out good. No crystal involved, I really do not like crystal malt any more. Instead, Amber, brown and chocolate malts to give it a nice character

 

[applescrap]

Drinking through the pumkin still and enjoying it. Hops need consideration as does the no chill effect on hops. The no boil portion of this beer gives it a freshness and richness. I don't think we know enough to be determining shelf stability of no boil beers at this point. Also this is a long-standing method of beer brewing that I would guess has certainly proven stability at least in the Saison Market.

 

[rubyroo]

170 for a half hour seems sufficient. I raise the temp in the kettle to perform a mash out and then the hop stand / pasteurization temp. My ovens lowest temp is 170 which is very convenient.

I've been doing a bunch of research and having trouble finding any good info on bitterness calculations when doing a hop stand only and never exceeding 170f. It's considered sub isomerization temp and therefore zero ibu.. as I said before I certainly had enough bitterness to balance the sweetness of my beer which finished at 1.011. It was certainly perceivable and firm but harmonious and far from sharp. I have really just been winging it at this point. There seems to be very little good data.

I am also very curious about the long term shelf stability. The generally accepted idea is that haze leads to instability. But many wit/wheat, saison or NEIPA are very hazy. I think sanitation and oxygen exposure are factors. It would be interesting to see just when these beers become undrinkable. Other factors I could think of are ABV and cold or warm storage. I feel like if they are higher in alcohol and stored cold they should last a lot longer.

I will be brewing a no boil stout soon. The texture of this style should lend itself perfectly to a nice thick stout. Let us know how your dark mild turns out.